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The purpose of this study is to define FinTech, differentiating it from financial technology and use the definition to develop an industry framework.

Using the existing literature on FinTech and incorporating these contributions into a traditional financial structure, characteristics are outlined and placed into a framework that describes the FinTech industry.

FinTech is a specific type of Financial Technology, defined as technology used to provide financial markets a financial product or financial service, characterized by sophisticated technology relative to existing technology in that market. Firms that primarily use FinTech are classified as FinTech firms. Using these definitions, the paper provides a structure for the FinTech industry, classifying each type of FinTech firm by FinTech characteristics.

Research that would inform the economic importance of FinTech would be served with an increased understanding of FinTech firms and the FinTech industry.

This paper contributes by defining FinTech and developing a comprehensive framework to describe the emerging FinTech industry.

The authors examine whether the stronger information content of chief financial officer (CFO) insider trading relative to that of chief executive officers (CEOs) results from a different willingness to exploit the information asymmetry that exists between executives and outside shareholders (scrutiny hypothesis) or from differing financial acumen between CFOs and CEOs (financial acumen hypothesis). The authors consider the information content of equity purchases for CEOs and CFOs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors examine purchase-based insider trading portfolio returns before and after the implementation of SOX in firms with high versus low regulation, for routine and opportunistic managers, and in samples of CEOs with prior CFO experience.

The authors provide evidence that SOX affected executives differently and provide support for the scrutiny hypothesis. CFO-based portfolios remain the most profitable post-SOX, but the magnitude of returns has fallen in absolute and relative terms compared to returns for CEOs. Superior financial acumen of CFOs does not appear to be supported. CEO purchase trade returns appear to be lower than CFO returns because CEOs face greater visibility and scrutiny and thus limit their own trading aggressiveness.

This research contributes to the literature in explaining why CFOs best CEOs in their insider trading purchases and documents that in the post-SOX period, CFO insider trading superiority disappears.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an insurance framework to address the challenge of managing default risk for lenders providing credit to small and micro businesses.

A theoretical model is developed showing how mircrofinance lenders can better manage the default risks of small and micro businesses, which assists lenders in sustainably providing affordable microfinance.

The model explains how to determine the feasible range of insurance premiums to advise lenders on the appropriate price for microinsurance protecting against small and micro business default. This will enable microfinance institutions to better manage default risk, and thereby provide sustainable and accessible microfinance assistance to small and micro businesses.

The need for microfinance is essential to support small and micro businesses. The insurance framework assists financial institutions in managing default risk of small and micro businesses, enhancing sustainability of these critical financing channels, and supporting the economic development of society in both the developed and developing worlds. The insurance framework proposed will help both policymakers and financial institutions to make better economic decisions, thereby serving small and micro businesses.

This is the first study in the area of microfinance to propose a way to solve the challenge of providing sustainable mircrofinance services and mitigating small and micro businesses’ difficulty in receiving the financial help they need.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the gender of the top executives is associated with the strength of corporate governance mechanisms within a firm.

The paper uses panel and instrumental variable regressions on an eight-year sample of the S&P 1,500 firms.

The results indicate that firms with female Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers have higher quality governance practices. Moreover, female CEOs are documented to have the most significant influence on the governance attributes related to the board of directors and takeover defenses mechanisms.

Overall, these findings indicate that the gender of the firm’s executives may have important implications for the strength of corporate governance. The paper promotes the importance of the recent national policies in numerous countries on gender quotas at the executive level.